


Bury Me Facedown

by paperxcrowns



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Buried Alive, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Good Older Sibling Jason Todd, Hurt/Comfort, Jason Todd Needs A Hug, Near Death Experiences, Panic Attacks, Tim Drake Needs a Hug, Whump, i love this trope :), near the end, suffocation, the batfam makes an appearance, they're panicking but there's no disco
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-02
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-14 06:54:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29788125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperxcrowns/pseuds/paperxcrowns
Summary: Tim wakes up buried six feet under the ground.
Relationships: Tim Drake & Jason Todd
Comments: 20
Kudos: 294





	Bury Me Facedown

**Author's Note:**

> have we had enough Tim angst? or Jason angst? i think not.

Tim was used to waking up in strange places. Either because it had been too dark to take stock of his surroundings or because he’d been kidnapped and taken to an unknown location. When he woke up, brain fuzzy and mouth dry, he knew something was seriously wrong.

He wasn’t in his bed. He wasn’t sure  _ where _ he was, exactly. He didn’t remember going to bed last night.

Actually, Tim didn’t remember anything past going on a recon mission for a drug cartel that had emerged in Gotham.

Tim shifted, feeling coarse wood grain underneath him. He could be in a cellar, though his fuzzy brain told him that wasn’t right. Wherever he was, Tim had  _ definitely _ not gone willingly. He’d probably been drugged, judging from the fuzziness clouding his brain.

First things first. He’d figure out where the hell he was and then he’d figure out how the hell he got there.

He tried to sit up but his head hit something hard just a few inches above his head. He fell back down on his back with a curse, sneezing when he inhaled dust. 

Okay, so there was something above his head. His hands were untied, so his kidnappers clearly weren’t worried about him getting out. Either bad planning on their side, or a severe underestimation of Tim’s abilities.

He tried to shift to the side, keeping his head low to avoid hitting it again, but came to a stop when he hit a wall.

Okay, so he hadn’t been panicking before. But now, he was damn well close to panicking. 

It had been easy to assume the darkness had been because the lights were turned off, not because--

Tim pushed the panic away. It wouldn’t help him. Dissolving into a panic attack would only use up his limited oxygen and he would choke on the ridiculous amount of dust in the air. He could already feel coughs build up. Besides, he wasn’t sure one hundred percent he  _ was _ buried alive.

_ Lie.  _

He felt around, rapping his knuckles against the wood over his head, dragging his hands along the sides, over his head, his feet kicking at wood. Tim took a shaky breath, trying to calm himself.

“Jason went through this,” he muttered to himself, trying to sound more confident about the situation than he felt. “He managed to climb out. This is fine.”

The good news that the wood didn’t seem very sturdy. If he kicked it hard enough, he was sure he could dislodge the nails on the top. It wasn’t much, but it did calm him a little more.

Tim reached up and almost cried in relief when he felt the comm in his ear. 

Tim’s kidnappers had done a quick burial. They wanted to keep him from bothering them, but their primary goal clearly hadn’t been to kill Tim, just to get rid of him. Burying him seemed like a rather tedious task, but people were dramatic like that sometimes. 

“Hello?” he called. His voice was shaking. He cleared his throat. “This is Red Robin. Is anyone here?”

Oracle and Nightwing had known about the stake-out tonight. He’d asked Nightwing to help him the other day, and there was no way Tim was allowed to go out on patrol alone without telling Oracle, anyways. 

They’d realize he was missing before he ran out of air, he tried to convince himself.

“Red Robin to… Red Robin to Oracle, come in.”

The comm crackled with static in his ear. It wasn’t broken, but with each unanswered call, that didn’t matter much to Tim. they weren’t answering and he was panicking.

“Red Robin to Oracle, come in,” he said again, more frantically. “Someone, please just come in. I need help.”

Static on the other side. Tim took a deep breath.

“Someone, come in. Oracle. Batman? Nightwing, come in. Nightwing, this is Red Robin, I need assistance. I don’t--” He swallowed drily. “I don’t know where I am. I was compromised during my stakeout, I need immediate assistance.”

Static. He thought he might have heard the crackle of a voice, but nothing came. Oracle didn’t tell him she’d pinpoint his location, Nightwing didn’t say he’d be there as soon as he could. Hell, Tim would even take Damian calling him incompetent for getting caught on such an easy mission over static and silence. 

“Okay, look, I’m sorry about disappearing for half a year,” Tim said, closing his eyes. “But I promise I didn’t vanish this time. I’m-- I’m in Gotham. I’m right here. I’m stuck. I need--”

_ Was _ he in Gotham? The drug cartel moved in and out of Gotham freely, and Tim didn’t remember much since heading out into Crime Alley earlier that night. For all he knew, it had been a whole day instead of a few hours. For all he knew, he could be buried in the New Jersey countryside.

The thought of being buried in the middle of nowhere with no one in sight for miles sent a shock of terror through his body and he quickly shoved that thought away.

He’d disappeared once, why wouldn’t they assume he’d done it again this time? He often didn’t show up to the Cave after patrol, just heading straight to the Nest. There was no point in looking for him.

He’d have to get himself out.

He exhaled shakily. “This is fine,” he mumbled to himself. “It wasn’t raining, which means the dirt is still loose, which  _ means _ it’s gonna be easier to dig myself out--"

Tim closed his eyes. The last time he'd been buried alive was when he'd accidentally detonated that landmine and had been buried by an avalanche of dirt.

While a repeat of that had definitely not been on Tim's list, he'd still made sure to know exactly how to dig himself out in case it happened again. 

He slammed his elbow into a corner of the coffin, wincing at the sharp pain. The lid of the coffin creaked. He slammed his elbow in the same spot and he heard a crack and dirt cascaded on his face. 

He coughed and spluttered, turning his face away from the shower of dirt, his fingers frantically searching for the lid, and pulled it down until dirt stopped falling.

Tim sighed and leaned his cheek against the cool wood, calming his nerves before brushing the dirt off of his suit and face.

The dirt clung to his face no matter how many times he rubbed at it, even after taking his glove off.

Tim  _ really _ didn’t want to have to climb out of… of what was essentially his own grave. 

But no one was coming.

He brushed off the tightness in his chest as the oxygen in the box thinning. He’d try the comms once again. 

“Hello?” he called. “Is anyone there? Oracle, come in. come in, Oracle.”

_ Please. _

If he was going to die suffocating in dirt, he at least didn’t want to die alone. He didn’t even remember what his last words to his family had been.

“There better be a damn good reason why you’re being insufferable on the comms today,” Jason’s familiar voice snapped over the comms. 

“Jason,” Tim breathed, closing his eyes as a weight lifted off his chest. “Jason thank God.”

Jason snorted. “Right. I’ll thank him when you stop yapping in the comms for help. The big old Bats are busy with an Arkham breakout. Again.” 

“I need help,” Tim blurted out, terrified that Jason would rule it out as Tim just being annoying and turn his comm off. “No one’s answering and I need help.”

“Weren’t you doing a  _ stakeout? _ ” Jason snorted. “How much help could you need? And is it urgent? Because I just bought myself a burrito and I’d like to eat dinner before I kill anyone tonight.”

“No, no,  _ no, _ Jason  _ don’t leave.” _

There was no way Jason couldn’t hear the panic in Tim’s voice.

“Okay,” he said in a resigned tone. “What kind of help do you need?”

Tim laughed breathlessly, resisting the urge to peel off his domino mask and rubbing the reforming tears away.

“I got caught. I don’t--” He frowned. “I might have been drugged. I don’t know what happened, I don’t know what went wrong and Jason-- Jason, I’m stuck. Jason, they put me in a  _ coffin. _ They  _ buried me.” _

There was dead silence on the other line and Tim prayed that Jason hadn’t ruled it as Tim pulling a prank on him and had turned his comm off. 

“Jason, I  _ swear _ this isn’t a prank, I--”

“Where are you?” Jason barked out.

Tim jumped in surprise. “I don’t-- I don’t know. I really don’t know. I just woke up here--” Tim gasped breathlessly. “I think I’m having a panic attack.”

Jason swore colorfully as Tim tried to control his breathing, his eyes squeezed shut. 

“I can dig my way out,” Tim said, one hand gripping the insignia on his chest tightly enough that the metal bit into his hand.

It steadied him a little bit.

“Just,” he licked his cracked lips. “Just stay with me? Don’t-- don’t hang up, okay?”

“What the hell are you thinking?” Jason yelled, startling Tim. “don’t you even  _ think _ about it you fucking idiot. You are  _ not _ doing that.”

Tim wasn’t getting any calmer. It was very, very hard not to panic right now. 

“I’m contacting O and we’re gonna get you out of there, okay? You are  _ not _ digging your stupid ass out of--  _ there _ on your own, you get me?”

Tim couldn’t breathe. He was certain that if he opened his mouth right now he’d start crying and hyperventilating. He tapped out  _ ‘ok’ _ over his comm with shaking fingers.

Jason didn’t make any remarks about the lack of vocal reply from Tim’s side. 

“Can you answer questions?” Jason asked sharply in a frantic tone Tim had never heard on him.

_ ‘Yes.’ _

“Can you breathe easily? Were you in there long?”

Tim heard the faint sound of traffic from the comm and it comforted him to hear the city, to be surrounded by sound instead of stifling silence.

“I can breathe,” he said, pressing the palms of his hands into his eyes. “Dunno how long I’ve been here, though.”

He heard Jason heave a deep sigh. “Okay. Great.”

There was the sound of a phone ringing. It rang eight times before someone picked up.

“Red Hood, this really isn’t the time--”

“Red Robin’s been trying to call you,” Jason growled. “Why the hell were you not answering?”

Babs’s voice was garbled through the comm, but Tim felt no less grateful to hear her voice.

“I didn’t hear him. Nothing came my way. I really can’t help, everyone’s downtown fighting--”

“Arkham breakout, yadda yadda, whatever. The kid’s buried six feet under in a fucking _ box, _ Oracle.”

There was a tense silence and Tim’s heartbeat picked up again. Silence meant being alone. It meant dying alone somewhere in Gotham. He was  _ buried _ under the fucking  _ ground. _ He was going to  _ suffocate. _ Tim was going to  _ die. _

“What?” Babs asked faintly.

Or maybe Tim wasn’t hearing them too well over his thoughts. 

“Red Robin was caught by the assholes he was staking out and they  _ buried him, _ ” Jason snarled. “He was going to  _ dig himself out _ . You tell them whatever the fuck you want, as long as you get me Red’s location and their ass on their way, I don’t care.”

Tim hung up without giving Babs a chance to reply.

“Kid?” Jason asked, and Tim marveled slightly at how quickly he could change from seething to unnervingly calm. “You still with me?”

Tim made a noise of confirmation. “Y-yeah.”

“You’re doing great. Just breathe deeply, okay? Don’t start panicking, you’ll use up your air faster.”

Tim nodded frantically, belatedly remembering that Jason couldn’t see him.

“Okay.” 

Tim focused on breathing deeply and on the sounds of Gotham through the comms. It didn’t help much. 

“Are  _ you  _ okay?” Tim asked Jason softly.

Jason remained silent. That altogether didn’t really surprise Tim. 

“I’ll be better when we find you.”

Tim huffed a laugh. “Yeah. me too.”

“Hopefully alive and not dead,” Jason said, attempting to lighten the situation.

“I’ll be-- I’ll be fine.”

Would he be? What if he really was outside of Gotham? He hadn’t heart any cars. He hadn’t heard anything when he’d sat in complete silence for several long minutes.

He didn’t know how much longer his air would last.

His only options were to either wait and suffocate slowly inside a wooden box or suffocate trying to climb out.

Tim tried to steady his erratic breathing. He felt like he was breathing faster than his lungs could take in air, and choked on shallow breaths.

“Tim!” Jason yelled. “Red Robin get the hell out of your head and stop thinking for five minutes, okay? Do  _ not _ pass out on me right now, you hear me? Or I swear to God--”

There was static in Tim’s ears and his lungs were burning.

“I can’t-- I--” he slammed his hands on the lid, all rational thoughts completely burned out of his mind. “Jason-- I  _ can’t.” _

“Yes, you fucking can, okay?” Jason yelled over Tim’s hyperventilating.

He didn’t want to die. He’d just gotten Bruce back. They’d just gotten their broken family back together again. He’d just gotten his friends back from the dead. He didn’t want to  _ die. _ He didn’t want to die  _ alone _ and terrified out of his mind.

His throat hurt from screaming and crying-- screaming?

His vision was fuzzing out at the edges. 

“I can-- I can get out.”

“Do  _ not _ even  _ think _ about it, do you _ hear me?” _

Tim slammed his fist against the edge of the wood where he’d dislodged the lid-- the lid of Tim’s literal grave. The lid loosened and Tim got a faceful of dirt. He gasped and choked on more dirt and his own lungs screaming for air. He coughed and coughed and couldn’t see through the tears gathering behind the white lens of his mask.

“Red Robin, fucking  _ answer me, dammit,” _ Jason yelled in his ear.

White spots danced in Tim’s vision as he kept choking on dirt and stale air until everything faded.

* * *

“Babs, the only thing I want to hear right now is that you have Red’s location,” Jason yelled frantically into his comm. “Because he’s not responding anymore.”

He heard the furious  _ click-clack _ of Babs’s keyboard through the comms.

“I’m still narrowing down his tracker, but the others are en route to Tim’s last known location.”

“What the hell is taking so long?” Jason demanded, running along the rooftops of Crime Alley as fast as he could, trying to reach the warehouse by the docks where Tim had been staking out. When he got his hands on the drug lords, he was going to kill them very slowly and as painfully as he could. 

Maybe he’d bury  _ them _ alive. 

Or get one of the Bats to do it since he’d most likely have a panic attack doing it. Like the kid just fucking had while all Jason had done was stand uselessly around, yelling at him to calm down.

Save the kid now, panic later. 

“He’s underground, Jason. It’s messing up my system.”

“We’ll need to fix that,” he muttered.

“I have a location!” Babs called.

Jason almost fell from the roof he’d been about to jump off of.

“The corner of Poplar and Hamilton,” she said.

“Who’s closest?” Jason called, running to the opposite side of the roof. It was in Crime Alley, last he remembered, there had been a vacant lot there after the demolition of an old manufacturing warehouse. 

“Robin and I are closest,” Nightwing called back. “We’ll find him.”

Shouldn’t be that hard. A freshly dug grave in a vacant lot really couldn’t be that hard to find.

“I’ll be there in five minutes,” Jason said.

He swung down from a building, landing heavily on a fire escape, narrowly falling down the steps after miscalculating his jump.

He shook his hands, trying to stop them from shaking. “Come on,” he muttered, climbing up to the roof and breaking into a sprint. He didn’t have time to freak out.  _ He _ wasn’t the one buried this time. 

He heard Dick shouting when he was just two blocks away from the lot.

“Nightwing?” he called, his heart pounding in his chest. “Nightwing, please tell me you found him.”

“I think I did!” Dick shouted back.

Jason grappled down to street level and rounded the corner of a street to see Dick and Damian shoveling fresh dirt to the side furiously. Jason was suddenly glad he hadn’t eaten dinner yet, the sight bringing back too many unwanted memories. He gripped the chain link fence to steady himself as he watched them dig.

But he couldn’t just stand there. He  _ knew _ how terrifying it was to be stuck under the ground. He had to get Tim out of there as quickly as he could.

“Where the hell is Bruce?” he snapped, dropping to his knees next to Dick and shoving dirt aside.

“Busting Tim’s drug cartel with Spoiler and Batgirl. They’re-- they’re  _ pissed.” _

Jason snorted, his throat still tight and his panic only rising. He hoped they’d be nice enough to leave him a few to beat up. 

So yes, he had a rocky relationship with Tim. But burying any of them was  _ off-limits. _

Fuck that, Jason was going to kill them. Maybe teach drug lords another lesson. Another bag of heads, another condition. Don’t  _ ever _ bury anyone alive. 

Jason’s fingers brushed something flat and hard and his heart almost stopped.

“I think I found him!” he yelled, frantically shoving more dirt away to reveal a plain wooden lid, cracked in a corner.

His heart dropped at the sight. The kid had tried to dig himself out. Was he still  _ breathing? _

Jason started prying the wood off the lid viciously.

_ Desperate fingers, scratching, smearing blood against the white satin of his coffin, hoarse shoutings as Jason pounded and screamed for Bruce, for Alfred, for Dick. _

Tim’s face came in sight, eyes closed behind the domino, face pale and sweaty, smeared with dirt. Jason pressed shaking fingers against his throat and sagged against Dick’s shoulder in relief when he felt a pulse.   
“Thready, but there,” he said. 

“We need to get him back to the Cave,” Dick said, voice tight with worry. “Robin, help me get him out. Hood--”

Jason was already moving before Dick finished the sentence. He stood on shaking legs, feeling like they were the consistency of Jell-O, and staggered to the other side to pry off the rest of the lid. 

It took some maneuvering and scooping dirt away, but they managed to get Tim out of the coffin. Jason shuddered and looked away. He didn’t want to imagine how terrible he must look under the helmet.

Dick gathered Tim’s limp body in his arms, lips pressed in a white line. Even Damian remain quiet, his eyes fixed carefully on Tim’s boneless form. 

“Batman is coming your way,” Babs said, her voice light with relief.

They weren’t out of the woods yet, Jason thought grimly, trailing behind Dick and Damian. He knew  _ that _ from personal experience.

But the kid was out of his grave. He’d be taken back to the Batcave. He was still breathing, he still had a pulse. He wouldn’t be like Jason. The worst he might get would be the nightmares. Maybe an unfortunate case of claustrophobia. Severe, from Tim’s reaction in the last moments before he’d passed out.

The Batmobile pulled up in front of the lot.

“Nightwing,” Bruce said, already out of the car and reaching for Tim.

To Jason’s surprise, he let Bruce take him in his arms and let him and Damian settle him in the backseat. 

Jason watched Dick warily as he stepped back to stand next to Jason.

“I’m sorry,” Dick said.

Jason clenched his teeth. “For  _ what?” _

Dick cast him a sidelong glance. “Sorry that you have to relive that.”

Jason avoided Dick’s eye. “The kid’s gonna live.”

They stood in silence. It wasn’t uncomfortable-- not anymore. They were slowly getting better. Jason didn’t mind his brother’s presence and his apologies anymore. 

“He’ll need your help,” Dick said. 

His sadness was hard to detect. Dick always did such a good job at hiding it, but Jason was better at reading people. He frowned at the ground.

“You’ll need each other,” Dick went on. “You’re the only one who can really understand what-- what that feels like.”

“What? Being buried alive? Pretty sure you can guess what it feels like.”

Dick flinched and Jason decided that he was too sober for this. He wasn’t talking about this. Not here, not now, and definitely not anytime in the near future.

He watched in silence as Bruce and Damian fitted one of the emergency oxygen masks from the Batmobile over Tim’s face. His domino mask had been removed. His face was a mess of bruises, dried blood crusting a cut over his left eyebrow and dirt clinging to his skin. Whatever had happened to get himself caught, he’d put up one hell of a fight. 

“Do you need a hug?” Dick asked.

No. Definitely not. He was much calmer than before. He was sure he wouldn’t spiral into a panic attack anymore. He didn’t need a hug.

“Do  _ you _ need a hug?” Jason asked.

Dick didn’t say anything. Jason’s lip twitched. 

“If you want something, maybe try asking for it,” he said, wrapping Dick in an awkward hug.

Dick melted into it, wrapping his arms around Jason tightly, settling his head under Jason’s chin.

“You shouldn’t leave him alone,” Jason muttered, resting his chin on top of Dick’s head. He had to admit that the hug was grounding and made him feel more anchored to reality. “He’ll hate waking up in his dark room and completely alone. Cuddles are your specialty”

Dick squeezed Jason tighter. “You’ll join?”

Jason scoffed. “Only if the little gremlin joins, too.”

“Don’t call him mean names,” Dick mumbled against Jason’s leather jacket.

“Fuck you, I do what I want,” Jason replied.

* * *

Tim’s first thought when he woke up was  _ ‘is this heaven?’ _

He was laying in something soft and he was unbelievably warm. A far cry from what he’d felt like when he’d passed out in that coffin.

Wait. Coffin.

Tim sat up, heart racing, ready to get up only to become aware of a weight on his legs. 

He blinked the remaining sleep out of his eyes and looked around the room.  _ His _ room. His room in the manor with the Flash poster he’d hung on one wall forever ago. But that wasn’t right. He was in his bed. In his room. The morning sun was filtering through the heavy curtains.

The weirdest part of this whole situation was the pile of limbs entangling him and trapping him in his bed.

Dick was curled up on his left, Damian held securely in his arms, sandwiching him between Dick and Tim. Jason had his face pressed into the mattress, one arm slung over Tim’s waist and both legs pinning Tim’s beneath them. Cass was basically laying on top of Jason and Steph was snoring on Jason’s side. 

It hadn’t been a dream. That much he knew. He vaguely remembered. Jason had talked to him on comms, trying to calm him down. The others-- they must have come. They’d really come.

Damian tugged at Tim’s shirt and he glanced over warily.

“Go back to sleep,” he muttered. “Richard insisted on this stupid sleep arrangement and Father said you are supposed to be on bed rest.”

Tim almost argued.

He was fine. By all definitions, he was up and running. And he had so many things to do, a mission report to write, WE projects he still needed to finish, Young Justice business to work on.

But maybe he could afford to sleep in just one day.

He laid back down as best as he could without disturbing the others, smiling when he felt Damian wrap an arm around his chest almost possessively.

**Author's Note:**

> [my tumblr :)](https://blas-ph-emy.tumblr.com/)


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